Okay, so that was a LOT of fun! Not just making the quilt, and plotting and planning and scheming and thinking (then sewing and cursing and sewing and stitching…
But maybe the most fun was “The Reveal” — i.e. show time!
Here’s how it happened. I arrived in the UK in June, after a month in Europe, and we were staying with old friends, Roger and Di. Roger was my “Man in Redbourne” – my fence – my parcel-keeper and message man – i.e. he received and kept the first Posted Stitches parcel until I could pick it up, several weeks later.
- “Hello folks, lovely to see you. – Oo! It’s my parcel!”
- rrrrrrriiip! Shred, shred, shred…
-”squeak!”-
Excited, fabric in hand, the stitching and embellishment began – I’m a gal with a deadline, and there’s only two weeks of June left. There’s been thinking, but now I need to stitch.
Two weeks later, late one evening in London, cosy in the flat of best friends, an email from Jennifer: ‘are you there? Can we chat?’
Now, bear in mind that we’ve never met. We’ve chatted once on Skype, but this was even more fun – we got the video conferencing going and talked away until the wee hours (my end), late afternoon (her end). “And here’s what I put here…. and this is what I did with that fabric you sent me…” It was ace! Odd to talk to a mostly-stranger – wonderful to find someone so on the same wavelength.
And amazing to see what each other had done with our fabric packs. When you pack the parcel, you get a vague idea of what might be made with it – for example, at the last minute I threw in a scrap of brown fabric, because I knew Jennifer’s hair is brown. But she embroidered her hair: the brown became a different part of the quilt entirely.
Somehow both of you get a hand in the creation of this thing, this little piece of art that is all learning, all stitching and thinking, and a tangible part of a new and growing friendship.
Hurrah for technology, I say. Let the second challenge begin!
